LAWMAKERS have increased to P485 billion their proposed economic stimulus package to jump-start the economy in the wake of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic.
Congressmen originally proposed a P370-billion fiscal stimulus package to help the middle class and save businesses from the economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic.
AAMBIS-OWA Party-List Rep. Sharon Garin, co-chair of the economic stimulus cluster of the House of Representatives’ Defeat COVID-19 committee, said the proposal, which has undergone deliberations in the technical working group level, will soon be filed as a bill and presented before the mother panel co-chaired by Speaker Alan Peter Cayetano and majority leader Martin Romualdez.
“This is being presented. I think the procedure is to submit it to the mother committee so that the mother committee can hopefully pass it to the floor for interpellation, or approval, hopefully,” Garin told the members of the economic cluster in a video conference.
The latest version of the would-be bill is a consolidation of separate measures authored by Garin’s co-cluster chairpersons Reps. Joey Salceda of Albay and Stella Quimbo of Marikina City.
The proposed fiscal stimulus package cover wage subsidies, interest-free loans, loan guarantees, grants to support activities to improve business resilience and compensation for paid sick leaves for COVID patients.
Garin said the amount for economic intervention reached P485 billion after accepting the inputs from agencies and other stakeholders, particularly the economic sector.
“First and foremost, we want to protect jobs,” she said. “We can’t afford to have 30 million people (daily wage earners) lose their jobs.”
She noted there are also 17 million workers from the non-essential services sector and six million employees of micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) in the country.
Garin said the stimulus measure would allocate P20 billion annually for mass testing to be carried out either by local government units (LGUs) or the Department of Health and other agencies.
SMALL BUSINESSES
The revival of thousands of small businesses adversely affected by the prolonged lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic can save jobs and revitalize the Philippine economy, Bohol Governor and former Agriculture Secretary Arthur Yap said during Tuesday’s Laging Handa briefing.
Yap hailed a resolution drafted by a group of provincial governors urging government financial institutions to offer liberal lending to MSMEs to help them recover fast and resume operations.
“We are asking the national government to support our moves to lend to MSMEs at a lower interest, if possible, at one percent. All over the Philippines the principal job generators and the overwhelming majority of companies operating are not the big ones but small, family-owned MSME corporations. So, we have to support them,” he said.
The immediate need, he noted, is to make funding available to enable them to adjust to the new needs of running a business under a restrictive environment of a community quarantine.
“They have to retool. They have to re-adapt to the new normal. How does a ‘carinderia’ now operate under the new normal? How does a barber shop operate under a new normal? They have to retrain,” Yap said, adding that small businesses will likewise need to mount hygiene and sanitation facilities including foot bath, protective gloves as well as safety packaging for products.
Yap noted local government units have existing credit lines with government banks like the Development Bank of the Philippines and Land Bank of the Philippines which are backed by the Internal Revenue Allotments (IRA) of LGUs.
“These credit lines are in billions…I think it is possible to give LGUs two to three hundred up to five hundred million for us to borrow at a very concessional rate of maybe one percent, which we can then re-lend,” he said.
The loans will then be passed on to MSMEs – restaurants, small industries, tourism operators, the transport sector — to give them a head start at retooling and rebuilding their businesses.
He stressed that the current policy of moratorium on payments for one or two months would not help beleaguered businesses much due to the uncertainty as to when the normal course of trade and commerce will return.
“If we give a grace period of two or three months to businessmen who borrowed from banks, on the fourth month can we assume that the business will be back on even footing? That’s not going to happen because as yet, there is no vaccine, no known cure, no massive testing. This COVID is going to be with us for one and a half to two years. So, in time how are we going to survive this?” Yap said. — With Peter Tabingo
